Magnum photographer Chien-Chi Chang photographed pairs of some 700 psychiatric inmates who are chained together and forced to tend one million chickens on a large farm in Taiwan.

The Chain

Photographs by

Chien-Chi Chang

This is not the concept for a modern dance troupe,
or a drama like Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”. If it
were fiction, the concept, casting, costumes, and choreography would win
top prizes. Yet, apparently, this is real.

Here’s the story:

700 psychiatric patients live chained together in pairs, and are forced
to tend more than one million chickens at the largest chicken farm in
Taiwan. Portraits of the players in this real yet surreal drama were
photographed with kindness, respect and compassion by Magnum photographer
Chien-Chi Chang.

The photographer, who was born in Taiwan in 1961, arranged the portraits
with consistency and vision that make the series work so incredibly well:
Generally a pair of “inmates”, chained together, stand and
face the camera against a dark background. We see them from head to toe,
the camera always being the same distance from the subjects. Yet the people
in the portraits move around in the frame, chafing perhaps against the
physical limits of the chain, trying to get away from (or showing affection
to) the person they are chained to, dodging in and out of the frame. Some
stand very tall, erect and proud. Others are slumped in resignation. Still
others stare mask-like into the camera. Some are like fidgety children
who refuse to stand still for even a moment. Some pairs have become compatible
couples. Others are opposites straining to get away. Almost all seem like
they are living in a sad nightmare.

Each photo is a little masterpiece. Combined as they are in this book,
the series of 48 (mostly) dual portraits becomes utterly amazing. The
design of the book is brilliant. Each photograph is printed superbly in
duotone inks as part of one long accordion-pleated sheet that is so appropriate
to the subject matter of people literally chained together. When fully
opened, the single page of the book could easily stand on its own as an
elegant gallery installation extending 20 feet long by 8 inches high.

Beyond the repetition and sameness, we start to recognize the elegance
of gesture, how the bodies are held, a toe curled up in tension here or
there. The way the make-shift clothes, soiled and dirty, hang limply on
the bodies. Attitudes vary from awkward, ill at ease, sad, defiant. And
then you try to imagine the realities of these lives.

The story is “explained” only at the end of the series, in
a long, compelling, pseudo-fictional letter from an inmate to his mother,
who had apparently abandoned her child at the factory some 30 years prior.

I will reserve the pleasure of reading the letter for your personal intimate
connection with this book. But here is more of the back-story, provided
by the publisher:

In 1970 Li Kun-Tai, an abbot in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, decided to become
a Buddhist monk. He built a thatched hut in front of his house, adopted
a schizophrenic as his disciple, and began to raise pigs and chickens
with his new helper, whom he kept on a line of string, much like a leash.
Within 20 years Li Kun-Tai, by now renamed (by himself) Hieh Kai Feng,
had 600 deranged helpers, most chained together, almost exclusively consigned
to him by their families, distraught by the shame of having to look after
lunatics, or socially unacceptable misfits. Ten years later, in 1999,
Long Fa Tang — the Temple of the Dragon — was recognized as
the largest chicken farm in Taiwan, with a million chickens laying eggs
and defecating in almost equal proportions. They are tended by helpers
from the 700 mental patients in the ‘care' of the Temple, wading
through slurry, eggs and chicken corpses. Hieh Kai Feng had by now sought
to sophisticate the impracticalities of string, and with such a large
number of inmates found that a light chain was the most efficient form
of control. So he chained them together, one by one, through noon and
night. He is delighted with the results, and proud of them. He firmly
believes he is not only taking care of his patients but also helping alleviate
the tremendous burden placed on their families.

Long before iPhones and Instagram: 60 years of one Dutch girl's "selfies" firing a gun into the camera! Outrageous lifetime photo concept — watch her age in the same pose — a split second after she pulls the trigger of her rifles — from age 16 to 88.

Kalasha women wear their hair in long, exposed braids; an elderly Buriad woman blends traditional cultural dress with Western fashion in her choice of sunglasses: these black-and-white portraits share unique, individual experiences from over a dozen different Asian indigenous peoples.

In today's hyper-connected world, personal intimacy can be hard to come by — these photographs (old and new) remind us how a good picture can put us back in touch with our inner, hidden selves and each other.